Why, God, Why are you taking this class? Bad Students Redux

Well, Nomads, it's officially fall. A lot of us are back in school, most as students, perhaps a few as teachers. And we know what that means--raping in the classroom! Wait, no. Idiots in the classroom. Oh, not you and me...well, maybe occasionally, but mostly I'm referring to those other guys. You know, the ones sitting directly behind you and talking through all the documentaries? Yeah, those guys. It's that time again, my friends.


I'm currently taking English Comp II as an online course, and a large part of it is peer evaluation. There are your standard gripes--the computer illiterate chick who sent her first e-mail three times and doesn't understand the difference between .doc and .docx, the bored housewife writing stories about her kids playing soccer, the insufferable page design--but any class you can attend naked with a glass of vodka in your hand is a plus in my book. Plus, part of our weekly assignment is to review the essays written by the others in our peer group, which is almost like snarking and getting paid for it.

On my second snark--er, review--tonight, I noticed a few puzzling things. One, the prose looked like this:

Quote :

It was the biggest room I had ever seen. Dark as night, you could barley see a thing. Walls that started at the floor but never stopped. I felt around and chills went up my arms making the hair stand up straight. As I tried to walk it was slippery like black ice in the middle of a white snowy Christmas. What was this place that felt so horribly wrong, the gymnasium in first grade at St. Joseph School.

Quote :

I had never seen such a big room; the walls went as high as the sky. I thought if I had a ladder I might touch the white, puffy clouds that our out on a nice sunny day. In the corner I spotted a rope hanging from the ceiling sway about as if it were a giant snake trying to escape its captures and I thought they were right I will never leave this place.
However all of a sudden another sense came about me it was smell. This scary place smelled just like my grandma’s house on Thanksgiving when we have turkey, mashed potatoes and corn. How could such a scary place smell so great? I found my teacher and asked where it was coming from. She bent down and which breath that smelled of a rotten onions explained this was also the lunch room.

...which, at first glance, is less puzzling and more head-deskingly bad for a college assignment, yeah. But what makes it puzzling is the other bits of puzzlement: For example, the bit about it being signed by someone that a bit of Googling suggests is a former graduate, or the bit both below the mysterious name and in the "Date modified" file information that suggests it was written in January '08, despite the due date being...well, yesterday.

Therefore, we are left with two conclusions:

A) A former graduate decided to come back to school long enough to write a terrible essay for a class he has probably already taken, is fastidious enough to have written it a year and a half in advance, and for some reason changed his name.
B) This idiot paid good money or blowjobs for a terrible essay and then forgot to change the name and date.

Either way, I'm wondering why I'm not allowed a Get Out of Class Free card on general principle.


Go to it, guys.

...This practically belongs in the Somebody Bought This thread. My Comp I instructor would've bounced that shit out, and I was in community college.

I am a very bad student. I have spent today writing a list of things I haven't done yet.

You'd think after only two sessions of Microeconomics it would be hard to tell if there's a bad student. Wrong.

There's this one guy who won't stop talking. He looks retarded, he sounds retarded, and he says retarded stuff.

If he were female, he'd be Jennifer Lopez.

For some reason, he feels he needs to explain stuff to the professor that the professor just explained to him, but in an entirely ass backwards manner than just leaves the professor with a dumbstruck "How Can Someone Be So Stupid" look.

Then the professor explains it again, and retard repeats it back, entirely wrong, AGAIN. Repeat ad nauseum. Business classes are the only thing about college I particularly enjoy, and I'm going to nail this dumbfuck's dorm room shut if I need to for these classes to remain enjoyable.

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THIS STUPID MOTHERFUCKER NOT ONLY GOT INTO COLLEGE, BUT MANAGED TO BECOME A SOPHOMORE!

There is a strange thing about electricity: Basically everything we think we know about it is all theory. On top of this, we use really confusing language to describe different aspects of it. For example, an increase in current does not mean that it is going faster.

Sometimes, you just have to accept what the instructor tells you. "The sky is green," or "the magic smoke in the box makes it happen," etc.

We had a dude who wasn't able to really get over this, and was trying to understand every aspect of it perfectly. The resulting back-and-forth between student and instructor managed to just confuse EVERYONE ELSE on the subject.

This isn't a student, but I think it's relevant. One of my biggest pet peeves is rampant in my Principles of Economics class, and even the instructor is constantly making this mistake. Learn the difference between socialism and communism, people. China under Mao Tsetung was not attempting socialism, and the majority of western Europe is not Communist. This is made even more annoying by the fact that a basic economics course is required of high-schoolers where I live, and this class is almost exactly a repeat.

Morinen wrote:

This isn't a student, but I think it's relevant. One of my biggest pet peeves is rampant in my Principles of Economics class, and even the instructor is constantly making this mistake. Learn the difference between socialism and communism, people. China under Mao Tsetung was not attempting socialism, and the majority of western Europe is not Communist. This is made even more annoying by the fact that a basic economics course is required of high-schoolers where I live, and this class is almost exactly a repeat.

Finally there's somebody who understands the difference. I too hate when people mistake those two things. It pretty much makes my blood boil.

ZoZo wrote:

I am a very bad student. I'm on WGW and SA in class.

Fixed for me. :unskilled78:

So, Roxanne is one of those middle-aged "It's never too late to go back to school" people who wears cat sweaters all the time. She can't go five minutes without sharing some stupid anecdote about her pets and will use anything the professor says as a possible segue into a long-winded "One time at the newspaper I worked at-" story.

One time we were reading a story that used this deer as a symbol to represent change. Roxanne raised her hand and went on, at length, about how this deer was obviously the narrator's "animal spirit guide". She then proceeded to lecture us all on her own animal spirit guide (an albino fox) and recommend about fifty books and websites on the subject. The professor looked ready to eat a bullet.

This semester isn't that bad- yet. It seems that being an upper-division student seems to have its perks- no more weeaboos, fundie ministers, or lazy shitfucks.

The worst student I've ever come across was a minister at one of those revival churches that are all over the reservation. She came into painting class and talked like she knew everything- that shampoo was the best thing for brushes, that every conversation had to be about her, and that the way she channeled Van Gogh was simply "exquisite" even though her paintings looked like congealed vomit. She always made it a point to be disgusted at me. Yes, me. A kid 26 years younger than her. She'd say "Oh, you're so immature." and I'd say, "Well of course, I'm 20. What's your excuse?"

So she painted like Van Gogh for a whole semester. She ignored everything the professor taught in lieu of her PAINTINGS OF FLOWERS AND KITTIES IN VAN GOGH STYLE LOL and complained that he didn't teach her anything. The whole situation was made worse because my mom signed up for that class too, and it was either do it now, or wait and do it at state university and have to pay for it. Now my mom was actually neat in that class and tried to learn, and was fun for all the kids to hang around. That's rare for a 47 year old. Definitely rare for Miss Grace, the boring minister who thought she knew everything. My mom was awesome and badass and Miss Grace just HATED how my mom was the badass awesome old person to hang around while she was just a lame person. Everyone could SEE through her asskissing and petty politics.

My art professor even waited until we were alone in the room just to say he couldn't stand her. Who cares if she teaches kids how to paint murals? She is a pain in the fucking ass and those murals suck balls even for 4th graders. It wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't so goddamn self-righteous about herself and went around being an ass to everyone who wasn't in her church or everyone whose art made her insanely jealous or angry. I made her angry- deliberately. Painting ministers running off cliffs like lemmings? Yeah. She had it coming.

That was last year. I'm surprised this year has been going remarkably well, so far. And someone thanked me for my merciless critiquing of his commission. THIS WEEK IS GOING WELL.

I had a class once which dealt with job market- and social policy. Now, this was in business school, which means there's going to be a pretty heavy emphasis on... well, the cold hard facts.

In that class was a student who seemed a couple years older than the rest of us, and who was actually majoring in sociology or something like that and just taking this class because it fit well with his major, or something.

This guy started to argue with the professor every. damn. week.
The teacher would explain something, say, how you might try to implement new measures and then find out they were giving all the wrong incentives, and the student would start arguing how you couldn't generalize this or that and you had to see people, not statistics, etc.
Basically stuff he had all his other classes for. Every single time the poor teacher eventually had to cut him off and point out that, while his points were valid, they weren't the points that were addressed in this particular class which we happened to need to get on with.

That was tiring.

I was in a stats class with one of those last year. One day he annoyed me so much that I stared at the back of his head and wished him dead. His nose started bleeding. I was so excited that I may have developed superpowers.

As a high school librarian, I've seen quite a number of "students" who just made me go WTF are you doing here?

This is especially common at the end of the semester when they suddenly realize they have to do the work or they won't pass. Into the library they come, seeking the textbook. All too often, the conversation goes like this:

Me: How can I help you?
Student: I need a book.
Me: What book?
Student: I don't know.
Me: What class is it for?
Student: I don't know.
Me: Who's the teacher?
Student: I don't know.

These kids have been enrolled in the class for 18 weeks, yet somehow they still don't know what class it is, what book they need, or even what the teacher's name is. :hair:

For some reason, these kids are still shocked when they flunk.

Lady Anne wrote:

Me: How can I help you?
Student: I need a book.
Me: What book?
Student: I don't know.
Me: What class is it for?
Student: I don't know.
Me: Who's the teacher?
Student: I don't know.

I feel for you.  I work in a used book store, not a text book store, but during the first week of classes, you'd probably think otherwise.  Most of our text books are outdated and not the right edition (because who's going to sell us their old text books for five bucks when the actual text book stores will buy them back for fifty?).  People still get pissed off when we don't have the ones their looking for.  "You mean I have to pay full price for this???" and "You sell text books, so how come you don't have mine???"  Also, the sheer number of students (heh, accidentally typed stupids there) that come in assuming we have the syllabi of all the unis and colleges in the area is just astounding.  We don't even have an inventory of our own stock, let alone what books the nearest university is requiring for every class.

I'm a terrible math student. I hate math so all I ever do is write bullshit for math problems.

263 ÷ 96 = 43 :lolinsane:

It's honestly amazing that I got so far doing this.

Not actually a bad student, but fitting with the thread title was this nice little girl who was in my first year at the uni. It's weird how a person can enroll at Biological Sciences and be so terribly prude and embarrassed at the thought of reproductive functions, that every word beginning with "sperm" (spermatozoa; spermatocytes; spermatogenesis; spermaceti; Spermatophytae) had to be taken out of her with a pair of pliers.
I watched her Zoology oral. The professor asked her about fecundation; I will spare you a full recount of the half-hour of sheer agony that followed.

Then there was this Histology lesson in which the professor was showing slides of a rat's penis cross-section.
Professor: "...and here you can see the urethra with its characteristic lining, surrounded by the corpi cavernosi, which fill with blood and become distended..."
Female voice from the back of the classroom: "...but why would they do that?"

Then there are the right idiots.
Our Biochemistry professor was a full fledged bastard - one of those who love research and hate teaching, grade students at random and overall are so full of it that they squeak when they move.
The idiot in question called this professor on the phone at 7.45 AM to explain the reasons why he couldn't attend the test, then was surprised that the other hung the phone in his face, so he called a friend of mine who was attending that session and asked him if he please "can explain to him that I don't feel like I'm at my best to give this exam, I tried to tell him but couldn't finish"
My friend said that he would (fat chance, as if he'd want to be singled out for special treatment) went to the exam, and listened to the professor rant for entire duration of the test about "that colleague of yours who called me on the phone while I was taking a dump, the gall of some people etc." Everybody failed the test that time.

The same idiot returned a Comparative Anatomy quiz with a question (out of five) struck out, and "I do not know the answer to this question, therefore I will talk about a subject of my own choosing".

Honors students at my college had to take some 'special' classes, one of which is a Great Ideas in Science class, which substituded for most non-science majors' selection: ecology.

The class was, essentially, a science class designed by the English department, and as such didn't go over well with anyone but the English majors (eg, me). We were bouncing around from ancient Greek philosophers like Anaximander one class, going over Newton's laws of gravity and light a few days later, and rounding it out with a biography of Marie Curie and a book on DNA by one of the guys who discovered it.

The students in non-humanities fields didn't do so well because they thought the class was pointless.

Eventually this led to an hour-long rant by the prof about how worthless and lazy we all were.

Tabby wrote:

The students in non-humanities fields didn't do so well because they thought the class was pointless.

Interesting, considering the Humanities classes themselves are the useless ones.

If people were expected to know more about the humanities, an internet forum dedicated to bad fanfiction would not be necessary. :hmm:

Oh, the stories. I'm sure I'll have some great ones when I finally have some papers to grade, but here's my favorite from grading exams for a freshman-level religious studies course last semester.

The question: Who was the first Protestant Reformer?

The answers we got:

• John the Baptist
  
• St. Paul
  
• Moses
  
• Jesus Christ
  

This is the sort of course that you have to work hard at failing. Apparently, some of the students were putting in overtime.

Of course, this is nothing compared to the students in a class in my last year of undergrad, who took issue with the instructor because he had the nerve to assign reading over Halloween weekend, when he clearly should have known that they had parties to go to. This was a senior-level English course full of English majors. All we do is read... and they have a problem with reading. I'd say about six of us in a class of 35 actually did the reading every week. The rest of the class did as much as they could to avoid doing any reading at all.

Lemmy wrote:

The question: Who was the first Protestant Reformer?

The answers we got:


* John the Baptist
* St. Paul
* Moses
* Jesus Christ

And then the next class was spent explaining that Catholicism and Judaism are not Protestant denominations.

I'm taking five APs this year (the year before college, hurr), so I decided to take one blow-off class. I'm finding the teacher to be thusfar incredibly ditzy but pretty nice and somewhat competent in her field (which, uh, is Fashion Merchandising)(so making window displays and stuff).
We had to do this project where we cut stuff out of magazines and made a "personal fashion poster" thing, where the goal ostensibly was for us to define what fashion meant to us. Arts and crafts, for eighteen year-olds. Pure fun. I felt silly and snarky that day, so I printed stuff from the internet that tangentially inspired me (Russian architecture, Pedobear, Emilie Autumn, rictus grins, Amanda Palmer, Nikola Tesla, some corsets, Victorian stuff, the cover of the DSM, 'My Immortal,' John Freeman, saver of humens, etc.), pasting it onto my poster. I gave everything, even the inanimate objects, big old angry eyebrows. I drew Goatse in the corner, labeling it as 'INTERESTING DONUTS!'. It was a good day to troll.
After I went to give my presentation on it, I felt pretty confident that nobody could beat my epic poster and I was LIEK THE BEST TROLL EVAR.
And then the girl with nothing but a cut-out of a liquor bottle went.
Of course.
I mean, a giant piece of poster-paper, blank except a lonely bottle in the middle and her name in the top corner. She did not explain.

Out-trolled, even if it was unintentional.
I felt so sad.

lemmingwriter wrote:

Oh, the stories. I'm sure I'll have some great ones when I finally have some papers to grade, but here's my favorite from grading exams for a freshman-level religious studies course last semester.

The question: Who was the first Protestant Reformer?

The answers we got:

• John the Baptist
  
• St. Paul
  
• Moses
  
• Jesus Christ

Moses!?
You know, I can see a little confusion on who actually counts as a protestant reformer. I mean John Wycliffe was translating the Bible into vernacular well before Martin L nailed his theses to the church door.But the latest person on that list died before 100 AD. This is absurd.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

The question: Who was the first Protestant Reformer?

The answers we got:


* John the Baptist
* St. Paul
* Moses
* Jesus Christ

And then the next class was spent explaining that Catholicism and Judaism are not Protestant denominations.

Oh, if only. This was on the final exam, and there were more questions answered in a similar fashion. I just can't remember them all. All the instructor and I could do was sit in his office and laugh. So we did. It was that or cry, and this ( :pointandlaugh:) seemed like the healthier alternative at the time.

Chaltab wrote:

Moses!?
You know, I can see a little
confusion on who actually counts as a protestant reformer. I mean John
Wycliffe was translating the Bible into vernacular well before Martin L
nailed his theses to the church door.But the latest person on that list died before 100 AD. This is absurd.

It was only a 100-level course; he just wanted the simplest answer: Martin Luther. You wouldn't think it was that tough a person to remember. Until you realize we also got "Martin Luther King, Jr." as an answer for that same question.

Lest anyone feel sorry for the poor froshies, remember that these kids were getting just the basics on the Big Five religions. No critical theory, no in-depth analysis, just facts. They also had the opportunity to take notes in class, download notes online, and use a study guide in preparing for each exam, not to mention studying their mistakes on the previous exams. And this prof has the most open email and office hours policies in the department.

Like I said: you have to work really freaking hard to do poorly in this class.

lemmingwriter wrote:

Lest anyone feel sorry for the poor froshies, remember that these kids were getting just the basics on the Big Five religions. No critical theory, no in-depth analysis, just facts. They also had the opportunity to take notes in class, download notes online, and use a study guide in preparing for each exam, not to mention studying their mistakes on the previous exams. And this prof has the most open email and office hours policies in the department.

Like I said: you have to work really freaking hard to do poorly in this class.

Those students are a huge pain to deal with, they should have been aborted because they perform worse than dyslexic monkeys on an LSD high. I am a firm believer that 70 percent of all people who take my intro to Women's Studies class are a bunch of retarded idiots like Mikey Go WOOGA who believe that everything I teach is a load of shit. I'm tired of stupid students- it's unfortunate that there are so few good students in my classes. Even in my 400-level classes, I am surprised at the smell of alcohol and sex that wafts into my office every morning.